Earthquake Camping.

I've got a what I think is a great story to share. It was probably 1993 when Scott was the scoutmaster of troop 264 and I was for troop 164. I arranged for 264 to come to scout camp with us at Camp Chawanakee at Shaver Lake. Scott came. We had a campsite right next to the water, and Scott's tent was closest to the water. It was a raised wooden floored canvas tent with very heavy metal bed frame. We put Scott in the tent away from us because he REALLY snored. We also noticed that he was a very sound sleeper, all of which, we thought, would make for a great practical joke. One night we (all the boys and I) decided to lift Scott's bed and carry it out into the edge of the lake so that when he woke up in the morning he'd be out in the water. The problem was, between the weight of the bed frame, and Scott's not too svelte personal frame, coupled with the fact that 12-13 year old boys don't have much muscle, we couldn't get the bed totally off the floor for more than an inch or two at a time. I had the end with his head. You could only get 3 boys on the other end. So I'd lift, and they'd kind of drag the bottom end, which was closest to the lake, across the floor a few inches, with the foot of the bed kind of bumping along the floor. Every time we tried to move him he would snort a couple of times then settle back down. Then when we finally got his foot end of the bed off the wooden floor, the boys dropped that end! HE NEVER WOKE UP! After trying to move him for about 15-20 minutes we only had him half in and half out of the tent, with his bed being at a pretty good angle because of the raised wooden floor. The boys decided that they didn't want to do it anymore because it would take them an hour to go the next 20 feet, so we decided just to leave him there and see what he said in the morning. So he wakes up and we're sitting around the morning campfire. He comes over an asks us if we felt the earthquakes last night. We all look at each other and smile and everyone chimes in, "We sure did", "Man it really shook us", "It seemed like it lasted for minutes", etc. He just shook his head and said, as I recall, "Well it was big enough and long enough to shake my bed half way out my tent!" Again everyone chimes in, "No way", "That's amazing", "It must have been bigger than we thought", etc. Scott said, "You should come see". Then he asked a couple boys from his troop to help him move his bed back into the tent. We all went over and I have to admit that the boys were great at not laughing and giving it away. I thought for sure he'd bring it up at the daily scout leaders meeting, but he didn't. I figure he thought that if no one else brought it up then why should he. I don't think he ever found out. He never spoke to me about it again. But I know the boys talked about it for years.

Kevin Richards